OSDev.org

"All ye who enter, forget all you know - or believe to know."

OK, I'll take the "dumb" approach. This wm / desktop stuff confuses me. Can someone enlighten me what my options are?

What does a window manager *do*, what is its scope exactly? And what does a "desktop" (KDE, Gnome) *do*?

Does a desktop always *include* a window manager, or could I e.g. use the KDE desktop with the amiwm window manager, or Enlightenment or whatever?

Could I switch around window managers while keeping the desktop?

Could I use Gnome apps on a KDE desktop and vice versa, or would I have to install both desktops?

Recently, distributions have turned away from XFree86, and opted for e.g. XOrg. Are these (X Servers, as far as I understand) interchangeable?

So far I just stuck with XFree86 / KDE whenever giving some *nix a try, and swallowed the questions, but I really would like to understand all this...

PS: How do GTK (+?), Qt et al fit into the picture?

Window manager (in X11) is the program that controls how windows look (ie. borders, titlebars and such) and possibly implements some kinds of window lists and menus and whatever. Window manager's primary purpose is to allow management of windows: move and resize them, possibly minimize, maximize, maybe implement some kind of virtual desktops (or workspaces) and so.

A desktop such as KDE or Gnome are a set of programs, designed to work together, including things like window manager, file managers, panels, tools, central configuration, and what not.

Most of the time, you can either use the "official window manager" of a given desktop, kwm (??) for kde or Metacity for Gnome, but you can also switch to another one. Choosing one that supports integration with your chosen desktop is a good idea, but not absolutely necessary. You obviously need at least the libraries for both desktops installed though, because the apps are likely to depend on them. Also some integration doesn't work with apps from different desktops, although there's some effort to try to support the most common forms of integration, including drag-and-drop and such..

You can use whatever X11 application with whatever desktop. In fact, you don't need a "desktop" at all, and if you absolutely want, you can even skip the window manager (although then you can't move or resize most of your windows).

X.org is basicly old XFree86, built from a snapshot of sources just before the XFree86 license change which upset many, because the new license included so called "advertizing clause", which "made it incompatible with GPL." More or less it's just politics.

Finally, GTK+ and Qt are "toolkit", that is, they provide various support for building apps, including but not limited to widgets like buttons, menus, text-inputs, whatever.. Gnome uses GTK+ and KDE uses Qt, but you can build apps using only GTK+ or Qt. Using a toolkit the programmer doesn't need to talk to X11 directly, which is rather painful. They also help unify the behaviour of widgets from application to another, and usually provide theming capabilities and what not.

Hope this helped a bit

so can you use th eultimate OLVWM and put KDE on top of that? how compatible with other WMs are these DE's??

i remember loving CDE and OLVWM... aah green olvwm...

Gnome and KDE both expect stuff from window manager (which even depends on the desktop version and what not) so generally you need one of the well maintained window managers to get full support.

About specific window managers (or KDE at all to be honest) I don't know.

I'm happy with evilwm.. that's enough management for me.